Afterword: Background & Context

The preceding public letter of support was written to Uwe Schmidt (a.k.a. Atom TM, Atom Heart, Señor Coconut) amidst current attempts at his cancellation after recent performances in Russia. Like many musicians who perform internationally, Schmidt has a long history of performing in Russia. As happens in any country, over the years he has developed personal friendships with organizers there, along with a sense of connection to local music scenes. The events he plays at are counter-cultural and typically have tenuous relationships with local government officials from whom they must obtain permits and approvals. Several have also regularly featured musicians and DJs from Ukraine. Schmidt is anti-war, and neither he nor any of the organizers he has worked with have ever made statements endorsing Russia's military actions or criticizing Ukraine.

Regardless of these details, and in contrast of ethos, pro-Ukrainian activists spearheaded by past and present members of the unapologetically pro-military, pro-nationalist and anti-pacifist K41 Community Fund have accused Schmidt and others of being actively pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine - sound bites that the Western music press and social media outlets are always happy to repeat and amplify without critical inquiry nor moral concern for the consequences on individual lives. Among other things, Schmidt has faced online harassment, attempted blackmail of both himself and colleagues, Western organizers canceling his shows at the last minute under pressure, and unfounded accusations in the press.

2 Xu, Hailin, "US ready to 'fight to the last drop of Ukrainian, European blood': former UK MP," Global Times, March 17, 2022.

As I detailed in my text from January 26, 2023, that lack of concern for consequences by the Western media holds a causal relation to the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, as well as Russians, foreign contract combatants, journalists and peace organizers. It is media's endless propaganda that both constructs and fuels war fever among the public until, in the words of former UK parliamentarian George Galloway, it "is ready to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, in the end, it's prepared to fight to the last drop of European blood."² It renders peace negotiations unthinkable in the public eye. Intentionally or not, countless major and minor Western music industries and record labels have also rallied behind this callous messaging - usually hypocritically claiming to do so in the name of peace.

As a reminder, in actuality Ukraine and Russia had independently negotiated a peace agreement by the start of April, 2022, less than two months after Russia's invasion on February 24. However, on April 9 former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson made an urgent trip to Kyiv on behalf of the US and NATO, where he successfully pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to break negotiations with Russia. This was because the West's ambitions since Ukraine's Western-backed "Maidan Revolution" of 2014 has been to exploit Ukraine for a prolonged proxy war with Russia - a calculated and long awaited escalation that had finally entered full swing with Russia's long-baited invasion. As Julian Assange sacrificed so much to show us, the Western military industrial complex does not fight wars to win them. It deliberately manufactures endless wars through which it can launder federal monies through private industries into the pockets of elites, as well as gain control of material resources. These wars are sold to the pubic under the guise of "spreading democracy," yet reality is that most places are left far worse off.

3 Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell, "Ukraine Sure Doesn't Look Like a Democracy Anymore," Newsweek, November 17, 2023. Yurii Sheliazhenko, "Open Letter from a Ukrainian Facing Prison for Speaking for Peace," Stop the War Coalition, November 16, 2023.   4 Jean Mackenzie, "Conscription squads send Ukrainian men into hiding," BBC, June 17, 2024.   5 "The tragic end of Gonzalo Lira: A voice silenced in Ukraine," Helsinki Times, January 13, 2024.   6 "World Economic Forum and Ukraine Agree to Work Towards Country's Digital Transformation," World Economic Forum website, January 18, 2024.

Today's ongoing destruction and bloodshed in Ukraine is testament to this fact. Through this war, the nation's previously tenuous democratic institutions have internally been destroyed, and any political opposition to the ruling party is illegal - including publicly calling for a ceasefire and peace.³ Men are kidnapped off streets and forced into military service.⁴ Numerous domestic and foreign journalists whose reports are critical of government policies face imprisonment and death.⁵ All of this is in preparation for investment firms like BlackRock to "rebuild" Ukraine by contracting control to Western private industries - as they have done countless times before. Meanwhile, The World Economic Forum has once again announced its ambitions to transform Ukraine into an Orwellian nightmare of digital surveillance and control of passports, medical records and banking.⁶ The heartbreaking truth is that this proxy war by the US and NATO against Russia is not offering the Ukrainian people a path to democracy. By design, it cannot and will not.

7 As the US is ramping up military tensions around Taiwan, and NATO is now considering offering membership to non-EU countries like Japan and South Korea, expect a future flooded with more news of impending threats from that other commie monolith of lore, "China" - forgetting the fact that the economies of Western capitalism have deliberately been made completely dependent upon China by our own oligarchs, and any power deemed unfavorable they may hold was placed in their hands by us.

NATO has a history of repeatedly violating its own founding promise to Russia that it will not expand its membership, particularly to nations along Russia's border. Whenever Russia reacts to this expansionism, NATO claims it as proof of Russian aggression, and proof of the need for NATO's continued existence. However, as Noam Chomsky and others have repeatedly pointed out, NATO was established after World War II to prevent communist Soviet expansion Westward, and logically should have been dismantled after the Soviet Union's fall in 1991. Instead, over thirty years after the collapse and breakup of the USSR into fifteen separate nations with separate democratically structured governments - of which today's Russia and Ukraine are two - we still find ourselves being sold feelings of Cold War antagonism against Russia as a Soviet-model titan. This is because it is an ideological smokescreen for NATO's continued existence. Post-Soviet NATO's expansionist hustle is that each new member nation is contractually obligated to defend all other NATO members in the case of any one being attacked by an outside force - invariably "Russia."⁷ Therefore, as a condition of membership their militaries must be expanded and upgraded to the level of other NATO members such as the US, UK and Germany. The vast majority of these upgrades are then purchased from the US military industrial complex.

In the case of Ukraine, NATO has repeatedly announced it will allow them to petition for membership - with no intention of actually granting it, since that would mean all other NATO members would be contractually obligated to formally declare war against Russia in Ukraine's defense. That is diplomatically too difficult to sell. Instead, the US and NATO are exploiting Ukraine and its people for a proxy war with Russia. This is in large part motivated by the US' economic fear of German manufacturing and technology industries being directly connected to Russian material resources, such as through the Nordstream pipelines. Until now, Ukraine has served as the diplomatic control conduit through which most of Russia's resources reach Europe. Ukraine's Maidan Revolution of 2014 was a coupe in which a democratically elected government that was friendly towards Russia was replaced with one more friendly to Europe. Ethnic Russian Ukrainians considered this a violation of democratic process. (These people are typically all described as "Russian terrorists," which is as incorrect as describing the rest of the population as "German Nazis.") Over the next eight years, Ukraine continually bombed its own citizens in the eastern Donbas region along Russia's border using weapons supplied by the US and NATO. Over 14,000 people were killed, while countless more were subjected to constant human rights violations. This unremitting eastward pressure towards Russia, including concern about violence against ethnic Russian Ukrainians, was the background to their invasion in 2022. Even then, Putin made it clear he was not interested in making the Donbas part of Russia and encouraged internal diplomacy, although he stated he was willing to recognize it as an independent nation if it seceded from Ukraine. His tone only changed after Johnson sabotaged peace talks with Ukraine, making it clear the US and NATO would not allow Ukraine to pursue peace through diplomacy. Meanwhile, Western media (including here in Japan) flooded us with stories of "madman Putin" randomly deciding to attack Ukraine for absolutely no reason. This is not to say Russia's invasion was warranted, but it is a deliberate manipulation by the media to present it as a sudden and unprovoked attempt by Russia to grab Ukrainian territory. The US and NATO expertly baited Russia. Russia took the bait.

I understand this level of international manipulation with no regard for human lives is a shocking situation most people do not want to believe, but denial does not alter reality. These are the things people should be outraged about. Not wasting time attacking Schmidt and others who continue to perform for people regardless of their being branded enemies of the West. I know Schmidt personally, and can say unequivocally that his performances in Russia were not an endorsement of an enemy, but were his way of showing the ongoing possibility for human interconnection amidst chaos and deception on all sides.

I encourage people to continue their own research into what the West is inflicting upon people in Ukraine, as well as the economic and psychological chaos thrust upon so much of the rest of the world, all in the selfish interests of those behind the military industrial complex. This is not conspiracy theory or "Putin propaganda," but a systemic practice of endless conflict by the US that had been publicly explained and warned about by President Dwight Eisenhower as early as 1961, and is currently verified through historical facts and research by preeminent investigative journalists such as Aaron Maté and others. It should go without saying (yet in today's climate it sadly must be said), my stating these facts here is in no way a personal endorsement of Russian military actions. Rather, it is what I consider an obligatory critique of the shameful operations of my own country of birth, the USA. At this point it should be clear to all that any public messaging in the West other than support for immediate peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia invariably works in the service of perpetuating an avoidable proxy war. An enormous part of why this still remains unclear to so many people is due to the willful misdirection of Western press and social media algorithms - including their hyping of Russia related cancellation campaigns such as the one targeting Schmidt.

I know it is difficult for most people in the West to accept that we ourselves have been heavily propagandized - perhaps even more than our enemies. It sounds unthinkable. To those people, I ask you to consider how on September 22, 2023, the House of Commons of Canada invited Yaroslav Hunka, a 98 year old Ukranian Canadian, for special recognition in honor of his bravery fighting against the Russians in World War II. Following an address by Zelensky to the Canadian Parliament asking for more weapons and funding, Hunka was brought out as a living symbol of Canada and Ukraine's unification and eternal commitment to fighting Russia. Hunka received not one, but two standing ovations by all house members, including prime minister Justin Trudeau. For those of you who have still not connected the dots, during World War II the Soviet Union was a key member of the Allies fighting against the Axis powers. It turns out Canada's top political officials gave multiple ovations to a man who actively fought against Allied forces in the SS Division Galicia of the military wing of the Nazi Party, the Waffen-SS, which was formed by Holocaust organizer Heinrich Himmler. This is the truly bizarre and mindless level of anti-Russian hysteria in which we live. It is like a page directly out of 1984, "Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, Eastasia has always been our ally. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, Eurasia has always been our ally." (By the way, the Polish government opened an inquiry into extraditing Hunka to face charges for war crimes.)

If you did not realize or were slow to realize that anyone fighting against Russia in World War II would have been fighting with the Nazis, please consider the possibility that it is a sign you have internalized a specific brand of contemporary anti-Russian propaganda - and ask to what end. For example, does the notion of Russia being our eternal enemy make it easier for people to rally behind today's proxy war without thought, and draw our attention away from the specific contexts and events of this moment? Does it make publicly discussing those contexts and events near impossible? Does it foster silence around them by making people fearful of being immediately prejudged as pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine if they speak critically about the US and NATO's roles in all of this, or criticize ongoing corruption and fascism in Ukrainian politics - despite those critiques coming from concern about the suffering of actual human beings? Could it make people fear losing their livelihoods, being ostracized by friends and colleagues, banned from social media networks, or having their financial accounts siezed if branded a "terrorist" for speaking out against their government? What if the effects of propaganda could become so strong that a person might be cancelled without ever making a statement about any war at all, but simply for traveling or working across a border - maybe playing music there?

As anyone who has had experiences in the closet knows, things are often not as they first appear and solidarity can come from unexpected corners. There is a dire need for people to break down binary fallacies of right and wrong, and recognize social corruption throughout. It is upon us individually and collectively to reject engaging in the abuses of cancel culture, peer pressure and blackmail. For those involved in boycotts, keep energy focussed from the people upward against actual sites of abusive power. Question those who demand compliance from others. Value education and outreach. Accept that nobody can know what is going on in other peoples' lives, and that they are entitled to make decisions that differ from one's own. Commit to peace through negotiation. Analyze. And when in doubt about what to do, remember non-cooperation is always a strategic option.

September 7, 2024: Some of you familiar with my work have expressed confusion about the fact that I did not take more direct issue with Schmidt and Ronstadt's a-political aspirations. One of the consistencies of my work is an insistence that all music and media are unavoidably political because of their relationships to the social contexts and economies through which they are produced and consumed. Consequently, when a producer offers no direct cultural analyses or political statements of their own, their works invariably fall into the servitude of the industries within which they move, complacently perpetuating the power systems upheld by those industries. This has not changed, and I still encourage all media producers to openly engage with the social systems in which they operate. However, for the purposes of the letter, I have been doing this long enough to understand that without ample clarification my position could easily be misrepresented by Schmidt's attackers as proving their point: that simply performing in a Russian context equates with supporting Russia's political actions.

Of course, that level of reductionist logic requires seeing the entirety of Russian culture as monolithic, with no conception of the culturally minor nor localized resistance to nationalism. It also requires a refusal to acknowledge Schmidt's long history as a counter-cultural producer, and how his current approach towards internationalism has been shaped by his emigration from the West decades ago. (These are complexities that I share with Schmidt, right down to him having moved from Germany to Chile and myself from the US to Japan. I believe he would agree with my saying those moves span distances of geography and time that parallel the depth of our cultural alienation from our homelands.) Accordingly, I sought to minimize chances for misrepresentation or misinterpretation by focussing on how that kind of potential reductionism, which is unfortunately so commonplace within boycotts such as the one behind the attacks on Schmidt, can obscure us from recognizing our actual cultural allies - and adversaries. Such reductionism strategically lacks analytical complexity, for the purpose of rallying people around actions of censure that ultimately contradict the very ideals of freedom they believe they are defending.

It was important for my letter to have actual use value within Schmidt's own social circles. As such, there was no strategic benefit to digging into our differences. Rather, I sought to help readers (other artists, organizers, fans, etc.) who might not be used to - or even directly opposed to - discussing the politicization of music understand and relate to Schmidt in this moment when he found himself compelled to break character and speak out. The letter also had to appeal to people who were on the fence about, or possibly already reflexively against, someone in Schmidt's position of being cancelled by pro-Ukraine advocates for having performed in Russia. This meant dancing around the reality that many people in this cultural moment - and particularly within the music industry - still immediately reject anything other than overt expressions of unconditional support for war in Ukraine in hopes of bringing about the fall of Putin. They have little room for hearing anything else, including calls for negotiating peace. Clearly, that is a tough crowd to address, let alone express something meaningful to. As a result, I dialed back on certain tropes one might expect of me.

By releasing his own public statement, Schmidt (like Ronstadt) revealed a pre-existing, socially grounded way of viewing audio production and performance. For me, that disclosure of a political analysis lurking within their previous silence already sufficiently demonstrated that, spoken or unspoken, politics do indeed lurk behind everything. As an expression of solidarity with Schmidt, it was important to encourage his political engagement (regardless of how certain aspects of his views and practices may or may not align with my own), and expand upon points of agreement, rather than needlessly criticize or shut him down. This seemed especially obvious in a moment when he was - and still is - actively being attacked and silenced by people with real intentions of socially and economically harming him and others via secondary boycotts. Crossing our differences to join in protest of the efforts of his attackers is a functional example of solidarity. It is distinguishable from commonplace notions of community, which typically end up sacrificing worthy political values to peer pressure, social mirroring, and a demand for ideological homogeneity.

While I am sure I could have found ways to incorporate all of these various nuances into the letter, it would have meant doubling the length of a two page letter that I had originally hoped to fit on a single page. And while it is tedious to explain all of these inner workings, I do so in hopes of creating greater understanding of my approach to expressing and inviting solidarity in the midst of differences.